


world series

by gdgdbaby



Category: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 09:11:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gdgdbaby/pseuds/gdgdbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cameron's on his second basket of chips by the time the Cubs decide to actually give a little and tie the game up in the fifth inning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	world series

**Author's Note:**

> fic centered around the baseball game, written for advent. originally posted at [livejournal](http://gdgdbaby.livejournal.com/94784.html).

These are things Cameron knows to be true:

Ferris has always favored Pepsi over Coke. Jeanie's been self-conscious about her smile since her braces came off in seventh grade. Ed Rooney wears a toupee (discovered in sophomore year to his immense consternation and their immense schadenfreude). Cameron's parents, despite their obsession with superficial perfection, still refuse to get him a replacement for his piece of shit car. Sloane grinds her teeth when she sleeps, so much so that her jaw is always sore when she wakes up in the morning. Ferris can get away with anything and everything. Cameron enjoys being ill because it means he has a legitimate excuse to avoid everything. None of them will be going to the same college, not even if Sloane is accepted into the University of Chicago or Columbia the year after they leave. The last time Cameron's father took him to a baseball game was in 1981, when the Cubs finished dead last during the first half of the season and didn't do much better in the second.

And of course Ferris knows about that last one, just like he knows about everything else, so Cameron can't say he's too surprised when their cab pulls up at Wrigley Field and they're pushed with the rest of the crowd into the ballpark. He can still taste the sweetbread and green beans from Chez Quis on his tongue as they buy nachos and peanuts from the vendors, can still feel reverberations from the moment of sheer, biting panic when Ferris' father stepped out for a taxi right in front of them, Ferris's body frozen rigid next to his on the steps outside the restaurant, that easy Abe Froman swagger twisting at once into a sort of staunch determination to _not get caught_.

All's well that end's well, though. They're seated at the far side of the left field fence now, a couple of rows up, and Cameron has no idea how Ferris got tickets—but then Ferris is Ferris, and Cameron has no idea how half of what he does comes into fruition. These things just tend to happen around him, like he's a human magnet for excitement, and adventure is nothing more than an inevitable eventuality.

It sounds much better in Cameron's head than it does when he says it out loud. "Nobody's a magnet for anything," Ferris tells him. It's the bottom of the third and the Cubs are still down 0-2. "That implies such passivity."

"Sometimes it's just easier to lie down and take it as it comes," Sloane supplies. She steals one of Ferris's greasy French fries and chews on it, leaning forward to watch the field.

Cameron rolls his eyes and follows her gaze. "That does seem to be their overall strategy against the Braves. Then again, they always play like shit—wait a second, _come on_ , umpire, he was _safe_ —"

"What was that call?" Ferris yells indignantly along with the other roars of protestation from their half of the stands, errant fries flying everywhere as he leaps to his feet, and the thread of conversation is lost.

 

 

Cameron's on his second basket of chips by the time the Cubs decide to actually give a little and tie the game up in the fifth inning.

"That's more like it," Ferris says, shaking his head. "Now if they'd just keep that up—"

But they're the Cubs, so they don't. The game bleeds through to the eleventh inning, tied 2-2 all the way, and then Ferris is catching Claudell Washington's foul ball as it comes hurtling toward them.

"I think I broke my thumb," he says hoarsely when he plops back down on the hard plastic chair, wincing. Sloane sends Cameron an amused look as he jams a handful of peanuts into a mouth. Ferris presses his lips to his knuckle and wiggles his fingers.

In the span of the next five minutes the Braves score two home runs. The game ends not with a bang but with a whimper, the Cubs slinking back into the dugout in defeat.

"Terrible," Cameron says, leaning back in his chair as the people around them get up to leave.

"It wasn't so bad," Sloane replies, voice dry. "At least they tried."

 

 

Ferris, he thinks, is smart in all the ways that matter. He knows how to read people and knows how to treat them, which is the key—because Cameron knows how to read people, too, but never acts on it. Ferris is soft with Sloane, sunny with his parents, could navigate the strange push-pull relationship he has with Jeanie while wearing a blindfold. He is utterly likeable and charming to a fault, so much so that people like Rooney can't seem to stand it.

Sloane is the lodestone: she possesses that calm, quiet ability to make anyone feel at ease. They've all known each other for years and still, there's something about the way she looks at Cameron that makes it easy to forget every nagging worry at the back of his mind.

Ferris knows how to read people and Sloane knows how to be soothing and steadfast in turns, and it does occur to Cameron after it's over that Ferris must have planned this all out from the beginning. There is no self-congratulatory glint in their eyes, though, when Cameron turns from the unmoving odometer and tells them that he can't live like this anymore, with a father who prizes a car over his own son and an absentee mother who spends more on household upkeep in a week than she ever does on him. They just look _happy_ , as if they've been waiting for this for a long time.

It's almost six o'clock and his father's red Ferrari is lying in the creek bed below, wheels still turning as it goes nowhere, and Ferris and Sloane are grinning at him like he's just hung the moon.

"Only the meek get pinched," Cameron repeats lightly, kicking a piece of glass and watching it fall off into the shrubbery. "Dad is probably going to kill me."

"But the bold survive." Ferris bumps his shoulder, smiling wider. Sloane's insistent hands pull Cameron away from the precipice. "You're gonna be okay, Cam."

"Yeah," he says. "I will."


End file.
